Office of the Press Secretary
(New York, New York)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release January 13, 2000

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT DNC RECEPTION
Private Residence
New York, New York

9:05 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. First of all, let me say I've had
a good time tonight. I've enjoyed taking the pictures with all of you,
and it's the only way I get to make absolutely sure I meet everyone.
(Laughter.) So I'm sorry that we had to do it so quickly, but at least
I got to see all of you briefly.

I want to thank John and Margo for opening their beautiful
home for us, and for being my wonderful friends for a very long time
now. And I want to thank the other co-chairs of this event for the
efforts that you made and the success that you had. And I would like to
just take a moment to say some things that may be obvious to all of you
about why I think it's important that you did this tonight.

When I ran for President in 1992 -- and I'm quite sure that
most people in New York could not imagine voting for a guy who was
governor of a state that many people here couldn't find on a map, you
know. (Laughter.) As President Bush said, a small southern state.
(Laughter.) Let me say something else -- I know I usually get on --
(laughter.) I keep reading -- several times in my tenure, for various
reasons, the press has said that I was a lame duck, and now they say I
really am because I only have a year to serve.

You know what a lame duck is, really? That's when you're
supposed to show up at an event, and you do, and nobody else is there.
(Laughter.) So you all were immensely reassuring to me tonight, and I
thank you. I'll sleep well tonight. I thank you very much.
(Applause.)

But let me say to you, the thing that I want to say about it,
just very briefly, why I hope you will -- if somebody asked you tomorrow
why did you come, apart from you wanted to get a picture, or you wanted
to say something to me about a particular issue -- Cyprus or something
else -- I'll say more about that in a minute -- I just want you to
remember, seven years ago, when I ran for President, in 1992, we had
economic distress, social division, political conflict and government
was discredited.

And the only reason I ran -- I was actually very happy at home
in my job, raising my daughter, with my friends -- some of whom have
become your friends, some of you in the last seven years. But it really
bothered me because I knew this was a great country that had more
strengths and more potential for the 21st century than at any time in
our history, and I felt we had an obligation to the rest of the world
because this is the only place that has the kind of economic strength we
have and political strength, and also we have people from everywhere
else on Earth living in America. We have people from everywhere else on
Earth, nearly, in this room tonight. (Laughter.) And that's very
important.

So, anyway, we set about our work. And the reason this is so
important is now the American people have to decide whether to ratify
the approach that has had such a large role in producing the last seven
years, or take a different approach. John talked about we've gone from
a big deficit to a big surplus. We've got the first back-to-back budget
surpluses in 42 years, and in the last two days we actually bought in
government debt before it was due, for the first time in the history of
the United States. We're going to get this country out of debt.
(Applause.)

And all of you know we've got the lowest unemployment rate in
30 years and the longest -- in just a few weeks we'll have the longest
economic expansion in the history of America, including the times we
were fully mobilized for war. And I'm grateful for that. And I'm
grateful for the fact that we have the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years
and the lowest murder rate, and all of those things.

But what I want to say to you is, elections and public work
are just like your work -- it's really always about tomorrow. And I
appreciate what John said about the job that we've done. But I never
will forget when I was thinking about running for a fifth term as
governor -- we used to have two-year terms, and then we went to
four-year terms -- I went out to the state fair. And this old man in
overalls came up to me and said, are you going to run for another term?
And I said, well, I don't know; if I run, will you vote for me? He
said, I guess so, I always have. (Laughter.)

I'd been in 10 years. And I said, well, aren't you sick of me
after all these years? He said, no, I'm not, but nearly everyone else I
know is. (Laughter.) So I got my feelings hurt. I said, well, don't
you think I've done a good job? He said, yeah, but that's what I hired
you to do. (Laughter.) He said, you drew a check every two weeks
didn't you? It was a very interesting encounter.

So every time we come around to a decision, we always have to
think about the future. And the only thing I want you to think about is
this. This is the only time in my lifetime when we have had at the same
time dramatic economic progress, dramatic decline in our social
problems, the absence of an internal crisis and the absence of an
external threat to our existence. We have never had all those four
conditions at one time. Therefore, we have the opportunity of a
lifetime to chart the future of our dreams for our children here at home
and to be the world's most responsible nation abroad.

A lot of you came to me, some talked about the Middle East
peace process, which I'm heavily involved in -- I hope and pray we can
reach an agreement between Syria and Lebanon and the Palestinians in
Israel in the next several weeks. And several of you talked to me about
how we've made some progress in repairing the breach between Turkey and
Greece, but we haven't done enough on Cyprus. You think about it --
there's no other place in the world where people would come and talk to
the head of a country and talk about these things. And it's a great
privilege to be an American, to live in a country where we have people
from everywhere and where our country has the opportunity and the
responsibility to try to move the world toward greater harmony, to go
beyond the racial and ethnic and religious conflicts that have caused so
much turmoil in the world. And I think that's important.

We have an opportunity to do the same thing here at home. We
have an opportunity now -- the reason I'm here today in New York is I
came to the Wall Street Project, sponsored by Jesse Jackson, Sandy Weill
and Dick Grasso -- now, that's an interesting trio. (Laughter.) And
why are they doing that? For the same reason that I'm going around
America trying to get changes in the law and new investments and tax
incentives to invest in areas and people that have been left behind.
Because we'll never have the opportunity we have right now, today, to
give people who have been poor and forgotten a chance to be part of this
free enterprise economy. If we don't do it now, we'll never get around
to it. We'll never get around to it. (Applause.)

Let me just mention two or three more issues. We've got the
most diverse group of young people in our country's history and the
largest number of students. We've got the best system of college
education in the world, and we have effectively opened the doors of
college to everybody, although I'm going to propose some things to make
it more affordable in the State of the Union. But no one believes we've
done what we need to do to give every child a world-class education,
kindergarten through 12th grade. Until we do that, we won't be secure
in the 21st century.

The number of people over 65 is going to double in the next 30
years. I hope to be one of them. (Laughter.) And I'm trying to get
the Congress to take the Social Security trust fund out beyond the life
of the baby boomers, and to add to the life of Medicare, and to let
elderly people on Medicare who can't otherwise afford it buy insurance
so they can have prescription drugs when they need them.

These are big issues. And just one more -- I could mention
four or five more -- I want to mention one more. I had an incredible
experience this week, which I hope every one of you will have at some
point in your life, if you have not already. I flew in very late at
night into the Grand Canyon. And I spent the night in an old lodge
built in 1905, with a balcony right over the edge of the canyon. And I
spent an hour in the morning watching the sun rise over the Grand
Canyon.

Thirty years ago, when I was a much younger man, I spent two
hours crawling out on a ledge to watch the sun set over the Grand
Canyon. And it's a source of infinite humility. People ask me all the
time about my legacy. It took millions of years to form the Grand
Canyon; doubtless in a few thousand no one will remember that I did a
lot to save it or expand it, you know. It's not about your legacy, it's
about your life.

But if you go to the Grand Canyon and you watch the sun rise
or the sun set, and you see that it took millions upon millions of years
for all these layers of rock to form, and they're different colors and
different shapes, so when the sun sets you watch the light come up out
of the canyon, and when the sun rises, you watch the light dive down
into the canyon. And it's like watching this breathtaking, constantly
changing painting. There's nothing like it anywhere in the world.

And I went out there because I added a million acres to the
land we're protecting, almost doubling the size of the Grand Canyon.
(Applause.) And when we did that, our administration has now protected
more land in the lower 48 states than any administration in history
except those of Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. (Applause.) Thank
you. You don't have to clap for that, but I like it. (Laughter.)

But here's why I make this point. When I ran for office in
1992, I used as my theme song that old Fleetwood Mac song, Don't Stop
Thinking About Tomorrow, and all during the times I've been President --
the good times and bad -- I have hammered my Cabinet and my staff to
remember why we came here. I was immensely gratified when, a couple of
years ago, a scholar of the American presidency said that we had -- and
this was three and a half years ago -- already kept a higher percentage
of our promises to the American people than the previous five
administrations he had studied.

And it's not a mystery. We just sort of showed up for work
every day, and no matter else they were lobbing in, we just kept working
and kept working. The reason I think it's important you're here tonight
is this: Just remember, for all the good things that have happened,
what we have basically done is turn the ship of state around, got the
country going in the right direction and got it coming together.

We now have a chance to think about these big things -- I mean
really big things. Just think about it. We could make America the
safest big country in the world. We could prove forever that you could
grow the economy and improve the environment. We could move beyond or
own racial and religious and ethnic conflicts and basically make a
lasting peace in other parts of the world. These are things we could
do. We could prove you could educate all children. We could prove you
could bring free enterprise to poor people. These are things we can do.

But they won't happen unless we make a decision, as a people,
in this election that we will not be devoted, distracted or divided by
the good times before. Now, there are a lot of young people here, and
I'm glad that you're here. But everybody over a certain age can cite
some personal experience when you made a big mistake in your life
because you thought things were going so well that there were no
consequences to the failure to concentrate. Everybody over a certain
age -- (laughter) -- isn't that right? I have about 10 laws of
politics, one of which is, you're always most vulnerable when you think
you are invulnerable.

This country will never get an election like this again in our
lifetime. When all these things are in alignment. And now we have to
make a decision about what we want to do for our children and our
grandchildren. And it's not as if we don't know what the great
opportunities and the great challenges of the next 30 or 40 years are
going to be. So we have no excuse. We know.

So if somebody asks you why you came tonight, say, I got to
see the President and he told a joke or two and we took a nice picture;
but I care about the America and the world my children and grandchildren
are going to live in and I want us to use this election to take what
Theodore Roosevelt called almost a hundred years ago, the long look
ahead. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Q One or two questions.

Q -- so much about the future and one of the reasons I think
everybody is here is because of their concern. And one of the key
things that keeps coming up in this election is not about the next four
years. I think it has a great effect on the federal judiciary for the
next 30 years. I don't know the statistics, but I know the Supreme
Court is basically -- I just wondered if you could comment on this.

THE PRESIDENT: I think a lot of people have not given much
thought to this, but when you vote for -- now, this is a self-interested
statement I'm about to make. When you vote for the Senate -- (laughter)
-- and when you vote for President, one of the things you should know
is, I have appointed a very large number of judges. In spite of the
fact that I think the Republican Senate has been way too slow in
considering our nominees, I've appointed more than 40 percent of all the
judges in the city today, but only two members of the Supreme Court.

Most people believe there will be at least two, and maybe as
many as four members of the Supreme Court retire in the next four years.
That means -- and there are only two groups of people that matter then
-- the President who nominates, and the Senate who confirms.

And all these people have been pretty honest, I must say. The
candidates have been pretty honest. Governor Bush said the other day
that the two people on the Supreme Court that he most admires were
Clarence Thomas and Justice Scalia. That's what he said. So he's
sending you a signal. He said, I want you to know that so you'll know
who I'll appoint to the Supreme Court if I get elected. And you have to
assume -- I can tell you that the people who are in the President's
party are more likely to vote to confirm his nominees, whether or not
they agree with him.

So you need to think about that. What do you want in a
Supreme Court judge? Do you care if they repeal Roe v. Wade, or not?
Do you want them to, do you not want them to? It's a big issue. And
nobody is talking about it yet, but you should be aware that this is not
an idle, sort of side-line conversation. This is a real, significant
possibility. And so it's something you should think about. And there's
not just that, there are all the civil rights cases and a lot of other
issues that are big, big issues. So you should know that.

The power of the President -- I really tried to -- and my
judgments were much less politically controversial than previous judges,
both Democrat and Republican, because I focused on getting people who
had good skills and were highly regarded by the American Bar
Association, even though there were more women and more minorities in my
appointees than anybody in the past, they also had the highest ratings.
So I tried to keep it out of politics. But it could get very political
very fast, and the public would be making a mistake if they didn't take
into account these things as they voted.